This is in response to Progenitor Castle, I'm not quoting because we're the only two in here haha.

Excluding Wonderful 101 the game's I mentioned were just the first to come to mind, I put zero thought into it.

When I'm talking about including elements people hate but others love I'm not talking about forced walking but things like having a weak melee. I can't think of a TPS in the past decade that didn't have a powerful melee attack, it's going against the grain to not include one. Forced walking I take as a necessary evil, I assume it's hiding load screens or being used to spew plot. I just wish that when loading was done I could hit start and skip it. Unfortunately it wasn't copied from RE6 but was heavily present in Vanquish, it was far worse there too. Impossible to find a game these days without forced walking or an equivalent, it's terrible but it's like water off a duck's back for me now.

Your complaint about W101 is way more in line with what I'm talking about actually. Dodge costing energy does kind of screw new people over but it's at the heart of what is a major focus of W101's combat.

When it comes to games like Bayonetta, DMC and so on they have this major mechanic of juggling or keeping an enemy in stunlock. It's a game within a game that has a great deal of depth to be found in figuring out how to keep the enemy airborne/stunlocked and later even more depth in trying to do the same but even more flamboyantly. It has a major problem though in that it is pretty much unnecessary and nothing forces a players hand to engage with it. The result is that new players play through the game without engaging in juggles and advanced players know that all their skills serve no real practical purpose.

Wonderful 101 was made primarily with putting focus more immediately on advanced play. The end goal of the system is to get the player to efficiantly kill the enemy in one long uninterrupted combo. In order to juggle you need first prime an enemy with a counter or team attack, the extra time it takes to set up a juggle adds emphasise to making the most of each juggle as opposed to short combos. Enemies often don't take damage unless they have been primed first, this adds greater value to juggling because a player will have to spend time engaging with the beginnings of the system if they want to deal damage.

So the goal of W101 is to get players to juggle, so what, how does that relate to defensive options costing energy?

Well the energy system and dodging feeds into that gameplay loop as well. Ideally you want a stunned enemy in front of you and a full energy bar to combo him with. By costing energy excessive dodging is seen as wasteful play, at first this seems like it's accomplishing the same thing as in Bayonetta but the goal here is far greater. If you don't manage to kill an enemy in your first juggle then you have to go back to dodging which will lead to greater energy use and so less potential damage in the long run. If dodging doesn't cost energy then defensive play is seen a more appealing option. Dodging until energy regens and firing off unite attacks would likely end up being new players way to play because it's safe and requires less effort.

There's another argument that the game is on the whole obsessed with making the player play absolutely perfectly while being excessively punitive to anything less. Dodge too late but still successfully and you lose Wonderful Ones needed to attack with for example. That aspect feeds into the scoring system in interesting ways. Dodging costing energy is part of that but it's the games juggle focus I find most interesting.

It's a sink or swim approach to teaching the game's mechanics that I can understand not appealing to everyone but it also seeks to avoid letting players fall into bad habits. W101 also features Witch Time and counter abilities but you aren't given them until mid game because they knew if players had those options straight away they would be less likely to learn the game's unique systems for opening enemies up to attack. By making dodge free I do think players would develop bad habits, avoid Hard mode and avoid the key gameplay systems the game set out to put a greater focus on.

Transformers Devastation went the opposite way about the same problem by guiding players into juggle attacks with it's invincible transformation attacks. That game is far less immediately complex though and there aren't really any bad habits to develop there. Amazingly game that's far too underrated because of it's lacking production values.

I've went off on one for a bit again but it's an interesting subject I think and it was an issue for TEW as well. It's something more complex or unusual games are always going to get dinged for in reviews and it does put off newcomers like you said. What are the fixes though? You suggest simplifying the mechanics to something more familiar but to me that goes against the point of the game's design and identity. Another alternative is lengthy tutorials but nobody likes those and if they are short things you read nobody reads them.

I don't think it needs fixing or maybe I've given up. I do think a lengthy tutorial in the menu's like modern fighting games have would be preferable to simplifying mechanics, especially if they offered a reward (Wonder Teacher unlocked!) as incentive. I think I don't care because I've played far too much of every game Kamiya ever created, I'm used to base mechanics so things layered on top become exciting rather than frustrating. Genuinely I think that might be the key, force everyone to play through all Kamiya's previous games. Or rather offer up more games that present the basic mechanics in an approachable way, like Transformers, and leave games that are more complex to their obtuse ways until the audience is ready for them.

ProgenitorCastle wrote:Just so you know Sutter, I'm on-off working on what I consider a long-ish reply to the prev. thing you typed (before accidental double post), so yea hope that doesn't leave you hanging XD

Honestly, I'm too lazy and lack the focus and energy to reply fully to your reply, but something from what I wanted to type back to you about was how you thought I wanted to alter The Wonderful 101. I did have some ideas as to what I would like to change, and to do that, I'd make either a whole separate build of the game, or a patch for the game, either one would be called "The Wonderful 101: ProgentiorCastle edition" or something like that that has a text disclaimer in the beginning stating: "This isn't the true ver. of the game, I encourage you to play the REAL ver. of the game at some point" or something like that to let the players of my ver. of the game isn't the true ver. of the game. Also, in the options menu somewhere, I'd have a toggle letting players play the original unaltered ver. of the game if they so choose to

That's ok, I have to be in the mood myself and it's pretty weird that this topic became about W101 anyway. It's fine to dislike parts of W101, I don't think they are without their drawbacks or have universal appeal but I prize them for the strong sense of identity they add. I think going by your words maybe you feel the same way.

Also rather than reply in the other topic about testing a glitch I figure I'll say it here. Seriously do not go out of your way to install a 50gb game to test a glitch very few people will be interested in. Like I personally do not even have a use for it, I'm merely curious and stunned that something so obvious and game breaking went undiscovered until now.